


Just A Summer Fling

by zesty_breadbin



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Fling - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, Summer Fling, i started half of this in May and finished the rest of it in literally the last two days, lots of contemplating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 01:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20145160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zesty_breadbin/pseuds/zesty_breadbin
Summary: Pete runs away for the summer.Patrick stays right where he is.





	Just A Summer Fling

Pete realises that nothing good can happen from this idea so hopping the bus that would surely lead to something worse is a completely reasonable decision to make. Taking the direct route out of ruefulness and regret and on his way to disaster and danger is like something he had felt from a past life, a friend in mourning crying tears that were never meant to be for him. Anyway you want to put it, the $1.25 and vacant stares from weary drivers is worth it to escape out of the city. Out of the place he had always called home.

He avoids eye contact like it is a sin to make any kind of connection with people. Yet they still find themselves obligated to interact with him, who should have been a nobody, "You going anywhere special, sport?"

Pete stares him down as if he is the one to be guilty of running away for the summer, "Somewhere that's special to somebody I guess," that is all you're getting from the guy in girl jeans running on two hours of sleep and maybe a gallon of self inflicted hatred, sport.

Seeing passengers in their midnight garb stare blankly through the rain speckled windows is something of a wonder to Pete's touch starved eyes. The people don't know him. Don't give a shit about that kiss or that night. He can be himself among these strangers, gazing straight through them, totally absent from his own mind. 

He watches as sheets come down on the bus, hardly making its way on the road, only illuminated by a street lamp every block. Pete watches the road like it is his list of promises he never kept. He is finding his mind between those white lines, they are trying to tell him something. It is almost poetic, Pete should write a song about it. 

When Judy had cried that night, Pete realized that there was nothing he could really do about it. Like singing, singing in the rain. A chorus of voices lifting this life he has from the shadows. Pete can hear her calling to his washed out soul from too many trips around her backyard, he can see her standing in front of his house like it is some sort of ironic moment that she was here and he is totally not there. 

Pete couldn't stand the sound of her cries. So, like all good men do when they run into complications, he left. For reasons known and some unknown, to even himself.

Pete has been fighting some serious lights the last few...well...forevers. A shadow that was never meant to be shined upon. The process is all the same. Every place he goes stalkers loom with shadows he can't even comprehend. Feeling sad turns from a hobby to a full time profession.

When she closes the door with those disappointed eyes, Pete doesn't feel anything. When he runs all the way downtown to lose himself in the night, Pete doesn't feel anything. When he packs his shit and ran, Pete doesn't feel anything. When he sees her shadow, in a long black coat, waiting among the rain for him to come back, Pete doesn't feel anything. 

When he sits on the midnight bus out of this city, Pete feels like infinity. 

He remembers her voice clear as the rain dripping down the foggy window, "Baby, come home," it is hard to go home when it seems to be changing constantly, moving like a current through the city. 

"Yeah, in a minute babe," like clockwork on the day to day. They go through the movements like every cliche struggling couple. The word couple doesn't even feel right, it would be more accurately described as an attempted twosome at this thing you call love. Anyway that is not the point and so not what Pete thinks about in his free time. The fact that they had gotten to the point of pretending, this last farewell should come to no surprise to her. Until she wakes and finds that Pete is gone. Regardless, he hopes she remembers him, lasting through her mind through the years.

Pete can't stand the quiet in her voice, in her gaze. Leaving is the most rational thing to do in that moment, he is sure of it. He thinks she was only in it for closeness, and Pete needs something more to hang onto besides skin. Or maybe it is the other way around.

A lady on her phone who has the same style purse as her. A man sitting right in front of him who turns his head in doubtful curiosity just like her. Just shut up Pete, goddamnit. He is tapping his foot to the song they used to ride along in the car to. And that was just the end. He doesn't want to think about the beginning. And how everything could have been different. How he thought he was doing right. How he was so wrong. 

If there's a metaphor for the bullshit stunts he has been pulling lately, he would be the king of all poetry. His thoughts are too complicated to comprehend sometimes. At least that's what she says when he tells her how dangerous the stand are, or how addicting her smell is.

Going on a midnight runaway seems to be the perfect idea after trudging through the relentless water of Pete's life. He has June and July to figure out his bullshit. Or, if he's being quite honest, escape it. Real, actual, life can wait. After all, nothing of his interests can really happen while he's away. 

The jet pack blues certainly come at the average getaway wannabe from the anticipated times before, letting him sulk in his own self-created misery until he finds somebody else to blame. And still, early June is feeling a lot like September. 

Is that Pete's heart and the suspicion he isn't all that high? Or the engine exhaust that seems to be drained of life from the dull passengers aboard. As time passes by and melodies of feelings come to be on overdrive this time of night he begins to wonder if he ever really remembers what it was like to be in a sweet moment like that. Just worries and kisses and more worries that took its sweet time coming to his front door just to leave him hanging onto nothing. And now that is definitely his heart he can hear. 

This heaviness that looms through the atmosphere amongst them is so thick it's almost tangible. And when they say your heart is in your throat, what if it's so fucking heavy that it can sink down to your stomach, pitting your body against you for doing this to them and just knowing that next to nothing could help this situation right now. 

Fortunately for his internal organs, Pete sees a sign pass in the distance, all neon and half glowing through the mist that has settled as the storm subdues to a sad sprinkle. The streets are painted with a silver layer of perspiration, freshly coated with the tears of Mother Nature. Hell, Pete doesn't even know where he is. This is his stop. 

"Hope you find that special somebody, sport," he means to be nice but that might as well have been a bad omen of certain heartbreak and doom to happen all over again. 

With the inevitable negative outcome and the imminent struggle of finding someplace to eat because, god, he was starting to feel the absence of ramen, Pete walks along the unfamiliar road. It seems he just couldn't get enough of the bad guys in his life, the playlist that has fucked the rest of his music taste for the rest of time. This isn't the lame-ass hood he grew up in. Headphones in, he passes an aristocratic sector sign reading a prestigious name that Pete is too lazy to produce, even in his head.

~*~

It is no surprise to anyone to find that Patrick would soon be the next growing failure in the mess you call a music industry.

A sullen, melancholy note before things get exciting. That's how it works right? And besides, don't we all need these little hiccups in life to get us where we need to go? Or is that him just being stupidly optimistic for, what, the nth time at being (unjustly) rejected. 

Patrick gave up his dreams from before. It's not like he was going to make any use of them. He's just trying to get by on teaching and living off of Chinese take out. Zach had made such a mess of things Patrick is still covered in his bruises. His wounds that brushed him by his gentle fingers. But they left their mark. 

This society just don't appreciate art enough to pick an obvious blooming artist with marvelous potential when they see one. Patrick guesses that they couldn't handle the triple threat to them. He can play, write and sing and their egotistic brains cannot comprehend the fucking drummer taking any part of the writing process. Well, fuck them.

Not that he is giving up though. He may be an optimist but he is no fucking pacifist and God be damned if he is going to let another one slide by his pathetic hands. It's their loss. Contemplating is what Patrick seems to do best though. And so that is what he does all the way back to the drawing board of his ongoing quest to seek out the next loser group who think they have talent. 

He walks home that day, like all of the other days of rejection. Arriving in the vehicle of hope and leaving with the walk of anti-shame. Anti because he wasn't shameful. It is them who should be shameful. But that particular walk was something different. It was like a familiar face he saw strolling down the freeway like it was nobody's business, shoulders back and stare set forward. Except it wasn't foreword, it was lingering on something that seemed to be very close to him. And the next thing Patrick knew, he was staring him down, in his striped polo that had done absolutely nothing to him. And, it didn't go beyond Patrick that he was doing this rather threateningly.

He was something completely else. It could be danger or it could be, well, danger. Patrick turned around apprehensively. His shadow seemed to be following him everywhere. Okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic but, really, the punk could lay off just a bit. He wasn't even trying to be discreet. Somehow, it all seemed familiar to him, a brief squeeze on the shoulder or a knowing glance in passing. It's something Patrick could remember but couldn't place what it all really meant. It was all really animus and made him uncomfortable. 

It would have been a little strange if Patrick had continued to stare back at him and would probably have ended in an actual walk of shame for Patrick due to the damn reckless anxiety he hoped wouldn't overspill at the brim just yet. But thankfully, he finally turned around and it worked out alright. Okay, maybe more than alright. Turns out, it can be downright enjoyable to meet his first ever semi-stalker. If said stalker is, well, him. 

They walked and talked after Patrick threatening to call authorities and him laughing in his face about how he looked all the way from that intersection on Main to here as he glanced over his shoulder much too obviously, as if he was one to talk. And besides, Patrick seemed to be the last one to even possess the audacity to run away from a cat like him. Cheeky shit.

Finding himself throwing caution to the wind and somehow maintaining a conversation with this man, Patrick notices his tacky and cheap sense of style complimented by the outstandingly way he finds a metaphor for everything that goes through his head very appealing. It is like walking with a living irony. 

Watching the back of his head get smaller after saying that he would hopefully see him again and giving a small smile Patrick can't help but feel a little better about the failing that band audition and walking home in his own pity. Because Patrick thinks he found another muse to occupy his time now. The unnamed stalker is alluring but comedic at the same time and that somehow makes him the most attractive person for Patrick right now. 

How is this possible? Some mistakes are meant to be made, Patrick assumes. He feels plucked suddenly. Like he isn't supposed to be there but look at him now. Like a God picked him to meet here in that instant and frame this whole conquest on Patrick's boring life and the unexpected people that get caught in it. Some people were meant to go down in history, not always by design though. How fucked that is.

Like them, Patrick guesses. They are the young people who have been yelling into this stupid void of mistakes but they will actually make them of something. He has a great feeling about this one. They're gonna go far. They are warriors fighting for a cause that they are inventing as they fight. 

Creating your own battle through the unfairness. Patrick likes that. It's like getting the whole world's attention and then flipping the tables by giving them the best and worst show they never asked for. 

It happened again. Carpooling with Andy and Patrick exclaimed through the dead silence they were both content with to stop. Through crashing the breaks and a letting out a few lines of swears, Andy nearly turned them upside down and Patrick rolled his window down, waving to the man who had occupied his mind the past two days. He leaned his arms on the window sill, keeping the shades on and smirking through his obvious delight at Andy muttering under his breath and pretending he wasn't doing anything. 

And that was how Patrick found myself perched at the edge of his room, self consciousness on over drive as the man found a seat next to him and observed his place with definite amusement.

Between his comments on his excellent taste in music and Patrick's on his weird fashion style, they exchanged a would be normal conversation had they not been so close in proximity. Pointing this out made him laugh, loud bursts and eyes wrinkling and everything. 

He could only stare into his self-conscious gaze. Those eyes like bottomless pools, deep still waters of endless thoughts and history that was surely none of Patrick's business and why was he doing this.

And in that moment, Patrick felt like he wasn't made to be in this world this way. He died and came to this life, inventing himself, creating a way to get to this moment, with him. Or maybe Patrick was picturing that scene in the movie where they defeat the unfair advantage they have over them in the gladiator battle too soon. 

If past lives are a thing, Patrick thinks he has been through every time in history. His mind has been expanded to a point beyond breaking, it was fixed. 

He didn't care if he shone or collapsed...and he blossomed and disappeared as if he were teasing the shit out of everyone trying to admire his pretty ass. And my god did Patrick admire it. 

Exchanging words was something and sharing names was another and then trading numbers was something on a whole other level. He left with a sway to his hips and Patrick stayed there with stars in my eyes and a whole lot of unfinished work to do before my deadline. But I guess that was the mistake you made for making history.

~*~

Pete watches the kids playing make believe on swings and thinks, if the world all slowed down a bit and looked down from the high rises that are like palaces only more boring, they are practically doing the same fucking thing. Adults play this game in life like it's something to win. They are no better than kids. Worse, even. 

Pete likes to call it whistling in the dark. A bright compliment to a very grave subject matter. Depression is something concrete, despite everybody seeming to believe it's abstract. There's a sort of rhythm going about that's like a sadness filling them up, inflating with each breath they take from their rising realisation that this life is doing shit for them. 

Maybe Pete was still daunted from the situation going on with Judy. He thinks he was going a little too far, a fish out of water. But what if that fish just wanted to taste the air, for once? What's a taste of freedom going to do to a guy for one summer?

Pete guesses they were all meant to get off some time. He was just expecting to do it sooner. When faces contort into something off, but still holding the same meaning, that was something to marvel at. Feeling mighty and high about it is like he is just a hero who never saved anybody. Somebody who doesn't know if it is better to be in history or forgotten to time.

And walking to some garden of paradise seemed impossible but walking this boy from the park and then the store and then his house was graciously indulgent and yet Pete feels he was getting something more out of it. Almost each day. He is starting to think Patrick is staying there on purpose. 

"I don't think I can see you tomorrow,"

"Is this pretty face too much for you to handle?" Pete smiles widely, this action seems to be the harbinger to Patrick's own. 

His head shifts from Pete's eyes to the zipper of his oversized hoodie, smiling under another one of his dad hats. 

"You know, not everything is about fucking the whole town-" he begins to say but then Pete starts to understand the gravity of what is coming out of his pink baby lips.

"Yeah, but rather than living in fear of rejection, I prefer to see if the world will let me figure it out, you know?" If he isn't careful, Pete would start ranting and stare off into some innocent passerby's soul.

Whether he is here in bed or on stage Pete feels so exposed. Falling to your knees, salvation is upon you. Or that's what they want you to believe. Pete is very thirsty for some action to be happening. However he always finds himself falling from Patrick's point of view to where he landed himself. And it's a dump. These days, he doesn't know who he is even addressing. 

And he is nothing really to be impressed about. Pete can see it coming from a special mile away, and he takes a hit too far. Waving the lengths of time, Pete doesn't believe the kids will ever be alright. Asking pointless questions that will never make sense but he has this hope burning inside him that kids don't have potential these days anyway. Yeah, what a vibe.

It's like this whole scripture thing where they are being salvaged by the all mighty, being who they are when they made them, him and the rest of society are all going to the damnation they always made for them to go to. From the beginning, Pete could tell that this tic-tac with a temper was going to make this time different.

Pete could tell this summer would be interesting. Already has proved it is. He is like Pete's best friend. He is in a park stargazing with this boy and all he knows is he is just as thirsty for him, probably even more.

Pete watches the lights turn on and pass the time by staring at the wall while his carnival mind is traveling the galaxy. 

Honestly, when his mind travels to her during the night, betraying his desires to just escape, Pete can't help but stay in a state of disbelief. She couldn't see it, that the famous Pete Wentz would run. Much les, run into this pretty looking boy who is finding him, piece by piece. All those pictures he sees of Judy and him are dead...and all of the other photos before. He was reinventing himself to make a little beauty out of the mess that he has of a life.

They are not going to make it but goddamnit they will not go down without a fight. 

"It could be our time now," Just say the word, and Pete would go to the end of the earth to see Patrick's bright smile. Sounds like overstepping but trust him, that is barely scratching the surface.

There's something thirsty about making the scene about you.The aqua blue of the sky when it lights up at just the right time, if Pete manages to catch it. 

Patrick's sadness is dirty but Pete loves it. He wants it. Give it to him. Stargazing isn't his thing to do with somebody. But Pete needs somebody. He is not alright. Persuading Patrick to this ordeal is somewhat of a miracle. 

Pete watches his flimsy hat begin to pick up from the wind, and catches it before it can go further from the structure supporting the two budding lovers from pummeling 10 feet. Tossing your feelings to the ground is something passive for Pete but when Patrick dumps a bag full of shit to hell it's poetic. He talks of myths and music. Articulating the rise and fall of great musicians, marveling at the evolution of music and Pete is only half listening. But it's a good rant. He has the pouring sky in his eyes when he talks. And here he's telling Pete that he is the one with words.

"I just need more words to fill the empty void that seems to linger when I feel lonely. And that is too much," Pete says through a barely moving mouth and a wavering confidence that questions every word that is uttered. Cupping his cheek now, Pete leans in but, the next thing he knows, Patrick's hands where pushing his away and was was staring blankly into his eyelids, some of my self-esteem plummeting. 

"Too soon," 

Patrick is not social. He doesn't go out. But he needs Pete. He is not alright.

Whistling in the dark.

~*~

Patrick likes music. No, he loves music. He fucking lives music. And nothing is stopping his very meticulous path straight from his house to the infamous record store. And when he says infamous, he means the only reason it has a steady string of customers is that it's the only decent one with the good stuff this side of Chicago.

There is something special about his routinely walk to his favorite place, besides the very sacred and comforting welcome of his bed of course. It is a ritual Patrick just cannot quite kick after his last relationship. Remembering it is almost painful, and that means being in an unstable emotional state quite frequently, as he likes to torture himself by relieving something that he shouldn't.

He just needs a good distraction…

"You know, it's gay month," Patrick jumps higher than the Empire State Building, mid swing. When realizing it is Pete, he glances past him to the roses resting there taunting him for his awkwardness, then down at his shoes, probably doing the same thing, embarrassed he scared him.

"Yeah, month of the gays," Patrick grows red after realising he said something redundant but Pete is smiling.

"So do you wanna do something gay or you got some other previous arrangement...?" Pete says with full choir and band behind him, at least that is what Patrick hears along with the racing of his heartbeat. He almost chokes, not believing what is actually happening, not the first time this summer though. Pete continues staring and Patrick realizes that he has to say something besides "fuck" which isn't quite the message he wants to give quite yet.

"Uh, no. Yeah, I'd love to," his blush is putting the roses to shame and his shoes are probably trying to get lower into the group from embarrassment. 

"Awesome, let's go," 

And here they go, Pete steering Patrick away from his routinely walk to that store he was saying he needed a distraction from. But did he actually say it? Because Patrick remembers he needs to be distracted, with music. But he is going now with Pete to do...something gay. 

Patrick remembers driving through the night and being so in love with the moment...he was riding shotgun with him...Zach.

He was Patrick's favourite record. He was his midnight drive. His escape from life. His muse to keep him starstruck. It's almost like this is part two of all that, but this time it seems much more real.

"What's up?"

"Daydreaming about true love,"

"Damn, that's deep there Stump. Can you handle that much angst?" 

When Patrick didn't reply, he wouldn't let up, "Who's the lucky guy?"

"I have memories of that selfish son of a bitch and it's just too much to handle now," He doesn't mean to be that harsh, but maybe tonight will be the night Patrick finally loses his sanity and goes all bat-shit wild.

"So you've had your heart broken?"

Patrick lifts the corners of his mouth, grateful for the chance to avoid his lingering melancholy for something so long gone it's just embarrassing, at this point, "What a cheesy way of asking that. Not subtle at all, Petey,"

He chooses to ignore Patrick's dubbed nickname he gave him, "Yeah, at times I am the God of metaphors and all that deep shit and all the rest I talk in duo lingo prompts," 

Patrick giggles, not meaning to let out how much he is enjoying this and how much he doesn't want to delve into the subject of the something that was like a childhood memory.

Patrick takes the broken daydream to do a reality check, because nothing makes sense sometimes and you just need a confirmation of that fact sometimes. Pete is taking Patrick somewhere. In his car. Is this real? He feels a chill Patrick hadn't felt in a while, and here comes the fucking nostalgia coming in again.

Patrick can hear the pounding that is his betraying heart, driving through the avenue of cliche that he is all too familiar with. Now Patrick is with him. Now he has a new favourite record. He got what he was looking for but it isn't enough. Patrick wants more. Pete is what he needs but it is just not right. Not right in the sense that everything is going okay.

The skies were red and blue then. Now they are purple. It is night by the time they arrive to this abandoned park, if Patrick could have observed everything on the drive, he would have recorded it all and locked them in leather binding with a promise to return later when he needs them for a rainy day. And there are a lot of those in the summer days.

Pete is going crazy. But it is everything that Patrick ever wished for. That he ever loved. 

Patrick is dancing. And singing. And playing for him. 

He knows he has something for Pete but can’t admit it but it is nice having a moment. It seems like he is betraying Zach. Like he can’t just let go of something so old and obsolete now.

The days pass with Pete by his side, listening to his endless whining about how they don't make music like they did back then, looking at all his arguments and not saying anything but gazing off in the distance. Patrick can't really tell if he is listening or not. But when it gets too boring for him, he would grab Patrick's arm and there they go again, off on another midnight drive.

Turning to Patrick, hand steady on the wheel, Pete smiles, asking, "Tell me what you like," flicking his eyes to the radio, Patrick shrugs, determined on being an easy, or hard, one. 

And the next thing he knows they are dancing in the hazy glow of his headlights, somewhere probably illegal, under skies that are warming with the action of all night.

Like Patrick used to love that one record, it isn't the same but something close. Maybe he would get there.

They dance like it is nothing to worry about now. He calls Patrick now and he can't pick up but he knows. He always knows. Every time Zach rings his number and Patrick sees the digits he remembered in his subconscious mind, he is relieving an annoying children's cartoon theme song. This, right in front of his in ugg boots and a furry flannel sweater tied to the waist, is his favourite record now. Dancing is not something he usually does but goddamn the one and only Peter Lewis is making him feel so weak and crumble to the ground. 

And when they are dancing like that Patrick can see him going all over town to his favorite places, and places he can't even imagine yet. For him. 

Patrick cannot forget his ex-lover. It's hard. He still keeps in contact with him but he's starting to see them in a new light. Asking him how he's doing. Fuck's sake. He knows like he has always known Patrick in his derailed state. But he's changed. He finds himself letting the memories of that time fade to cover them with some better ones, with Patrick's new muse. 

And there is absolutely nothing to worry about at all, because right now, he can feel Pete's hand. And Patrick's hair in the breeze. Sweaty nights. Lazy mornings. Wild rides. Not giving a flying fuck. He will definitely not forget the night he let myself go bat-shit wild.

~*~

"I'm fucking mad. But it's not her fault. It's my own damn fault. In fact, no, it's God's fucking fault. And this wasn't supposed to be about religion but here we are."

"Okay, that's a start, Pete, let your thoughts out, this is good for you.."

The same fucking banter back and forth, every week. That was what Pete had to deal with when he was still with her. He went to therapy and it turned into nothing, mindless ramblings to somebody who just doesn't get it. 

But now Pete has somebody who understands. 

It's the world that he lives in. Patrick loves life and him, along with everything else in this ugly world, will destroy it. 

How he hates the irony of this situation. How Pete wishes it could be simple. The irony is being so simple but having to go through the intricacies to undo it all. He saw her coat. He heard her morning sickness. He ran from it all. And here he is, seeking something else, something more dangerous. 

The most frightening thing is that Pete feels nothing. He has nothing to hang onto back home. Just a problem that won't fucking stay a problem but a nightmare. He has dreams of wanting to slit throats but only sees the hearts when he's awake. There is something dreamy about it though. It is like a metaphor that could go on to make the masses swoon at how morose and gruesome it is, hiding how ruthless it really is. Using the freak show of a kid to turn into a wholesome show to display for all. Like the devil in disguise. 

It's funny how his mind works the midnight shift while his heart seems to be on a prolonged vacation. The unfairness of it all. 

Pete's childhood is filled with bullets and knives and violence. He has hurt eyes that have numbed overtime but he will get through it. For Patrick. Goddamnit, for his own life. Because this is something to work for. Hell, to even fight for.

Having an episode like this will swallow Pete but who cares? He is exposed now. But still nobody knows who he am. Like a photograph ripped to shreds in his mind, the people don't really know the people inside. 

Just hijack the whole system. Hyping them up and then bringing them down will now solve the problem.

Pete is something to be feared but not to the extent that he will hurt anyone. When she told him that he would be a father that wound him up and he nearly fell apart. Nobody can know but that only puts a problem on an ongoing solution that Pete is bringing in his life. A problem making a solution to another problem. What a brilliant metaphor.

So here he is, rambling like a bumbling idiot to this man who he thinks may be the best person in the world. Watch him screw this up.

Why isn't Patrick scared of him? Pete needs something along the lines of love but he's still trying to figure out the definition. This mystery that has been staring at him through torn curtains has caught up, throwing itself in his face but he was too damn busy doing nothing to pay much attention. But now, it's time to face it. 

The future is really something exciting he told Patrick as they cruise down I-45. He frowns like Pete sprung a mental trap for his mind, which wouldn't be the first time. 

"Okay...?" Confusion looked good on him, his brows creasing together and lips slightly pouting. 

"Well, aren't we all preparing for this big, huge future, but then, it almost never goes as expected," 

"Yeah, that happens all the time Pete," 

"That's exactly my point, man. The thing to expect is the unexpected," 

He just smiles, taking his hand as they cling to the buildup in one of the many parks Pete sneaks them to in the middle of these summer nights, with a car that is probably stolen, nonetheless. Airy and enchanting, this is something not meant to last. Pete can feel it. Black ski masks and anger that makes even the humblest man the reason to fill someone up with their culture of drugs that induces you.

This is going to end. Pete just needs to take his damn time. He has a hunch about the future but it has a loophole that involves something that rhymes with dove, which signify peace. And they both fall hand in hand, bringing the essentials they need to a right and fit life. This will all end. They have this special paint that works well together.

And then she had to come up. Pete figures it out. They fucking took their love and left them to rot. Like they are scavengers on a heist to find an impossible cure for their ongoing injections. Pete guesses they just wanted them on a little something more stronger. They took their love and filled it up with novocaine. 

So here he goes, drinking himself into oblivion. And he's just going to be numb for her, Judy. Try reaching out but he will only recede. Thanks for making him this way, God, you motherfucker. 

Don't try to fix Pete. He was born broken. A slight malfunction in the machinery. Don't stop, though. He is like this, broken and beaten, and he loves it. He is here to fuck this up. He figures that he could be a waking nightmare. Meant to be a dream, but something went haywire and here he is. Like the drugs that are running their courses through his toxic tunnels of despair, he feels fully nude and exposed and just downright fucked out here, with a need to run but unable to move. 

Bluebirds singing curses at them like they don't matter. Pete can see the vultures. They are a bird to be feared just because of the negative connotation on them. In a way Pete envies them. Birds of a feather flock together. 

The dip in this road will drown him. He is just a still in time, for everyone to observe. Don't stop this drinking and cocaine until Pete collapses from guilt and the filling that has only emptied him of emotions and has made him numb.

~*~

You are your own worst enemy. 

That's what they all say. 

And he so wants to believe it. 

Being here at this pool is nice, but there are people. The whole thing would be so much nicer if nobody were here. Including Patrick himself. He has convinced himself throughout life there will be such social challenges as these and you just have to find any excuse possible to avoid being you. So he'll swim, but not here. Not in front of people. He can be cramped in a small space. He just wants to forget this moment and live in another. With a certain guy. A certain guy with too much fringe and eyeliner for his own fucking good. 

And he comes, walking along, too short to be real (yet here Patrick is talking) with a high tolerance for the summer heat dressed head to toe in dark clothes. 

"Why aren't you in the water?" 

"Why aren't you?" His smile tells him he had other plans. Standing off to the side of the party of awkward glances around the pool, they have a good time making nonsense rambling turn into a full blown laughing fest. And Patrick likes this, he likes casual, laid-back, and one of the normal idiots who spends their summer running off to be with an unofficial lover. Being told by the punk in girl's jeans that socks with sandals aren't as lame as they seem, Patrick is certainly getting all the socialization he need. 

When they drive uptown to this abandoned park named after some dead rich guy, which shouldn't even be called a park, the experience is enough for Patrick's entire lifetime. And Pete gives him so much more. 

Oh how the sex is good. He loves it when Pete moans underneath him, so hot and moaning promises that he had only dreamt of. Patrick slept in last nights clothes and tomorrow's dreams but they're not quite what they seem. Just layers and layers of stuff too sheltered to be brought out. 

Patrick just feels so good in that moment. He is now going off a tangent about how they are like two pieces perfectly fitting together. He feels like death couldn't even split them apart. That is how faithful he is in this blossoming relationship that totally isn't even official. Not even death herself, which is saying a lot since death is, like, the conquerer of all. 

"No," Pete says with that pitch of certainty, "It can," He insists with unsteady eyes and hope in his eyes, "It will," 

"Okay, then. Nothing but death do us part," 

"Then may death find you alive," he says. 

And so it goes, right through the warm air filled with doused nights of life and freedom, they are mixing together full force. Miracles are something aren't they? They are just on a perfect high, one Patrick does not think he could get out of even if he tried, with his guitar and ball caps backing him up. It's July now and they are on a different level of living than Patrick has ever been on. Maybe he could compose a song about it, about all of this magic happening around them, going through them, and pulsing right in that instant of being. Maybe Pete could contribute the words of the moments they share and they would be a perfect and inseparable music pair. Maybe it could happen. 

The words he has ready to say are always on his tongue but never seem to reach the surface: Keep me, Pete. I can't fucking lose you. Oath, pact, marriage, whatever you want to call this damn thing, I will be here until you push me away.

Patrick can hear it all, spread out in front of him like it is already there. And then there is this little voice that won't go away that says what he has been thinking since he and Pete exchanged names, what if this doesn't last? What then? But Patrick will not think about think because if he does then the moment would be ruined and then it will be like it didn't even matter. And Patrick is doing everything to fight his subtle but rising panic of what will come after all of the exciting thrill of summer. 

Smaller and smaller they go. In and out of these collisions through trees and hearts and love. So there they are in the goddamn park again having a grand old time. And Pete laughs and nudges him with his elbow, glancing down and then up again. Patrick takes note of how nice this is. The tide may change soon but he will be ready. 

But what they really are hasn't fully settled in until that time he took Patrick and just truly and completely looks at him. Like it is the very first time he is seeing something real. Or at least, that is what Patrick perceives Pete is thinking. Even hopes, delves into his wildest dreams and dares to bring it to the surface, just to have a taste of what it might actually feel like. At least for a little while. 

And just fucking. Fucking all day and night. How they thought it could last. And the price of that sacrifice is worth two of those little fortunes but here they are, Patrick thinks with conviction. 

Finding a way through life is like making a reconcile with death. Kind of odd how it works. Patrick can't get him out of his head. 

They go bowling and Pete throws it out the fucking window. And laughs about it. Patrick shakes his head like it is nothing. And really, it is everything. 

"Is this a date?" The words slip out before Patrick has time to even think of what they mean. 

Pete stops jumping and almost drops the ball, which would have been hilarious if Patrick hadn't been processing the fact that he actually said that out loud. 

They stare at each other until Pete grins, and starts to say, "I mean, yeah. Like, if you want..." 

"Well yes but, like, are we?" And Patrick just leaves it there because he is now turning into a substance not short of jell-o and can Pete stop smiling like a goddamn fool? He stumbles over the right thing to say but the message in which he doesn't even know the meaning of isn't really coming out. 

"It was meant to come up sometime, I was just wondering when one of us was going to crack," Pete says, coming over to sit beside Patrick, saving him from his own misery. 

It was with these words that Patrick finally addressed the thing he was dreading, the thing of endings and questions of what will come after, "Please tell me I'm more than a summer fling,"

~*~

Goddamnit Patrick. 

Why are they like this? Why is Pete like this? He can't escape. This is just another one of those moments.

"Can you explain this please?" The please is put in place not out of politeness but to spite Pete and his bullshit, as Patrick is dangerously quiet, waiting for some talking to be done from the man with all the words. 

Pete just wants Patrick to stay here and let him keep him through the night. Just the night, please. Pete needs to keep him, to protect him, and then sees what happens after. Making trouble until he finds what he loves has been his default control and God or whatever deity that created the stripped down skeleton that is Pete isn't changing it up now. 

It shouldn't have shocked Pete, what Patrick said. It shouldn't have. But Pete doesn't really know what he wants and it seems his...other person...knows and so there is a problem here and that is where the normalcy of relationships come in but it is still so taboo for Pete that he runs. And as he has experienced before, with running from your problems just comes more fucking problems. 

Bringing him to this room with a double bed and little packets lying suggestively on musty pillows, where it is implied some lucky couple would sleep together and have a good time, was probably not the best reply to the question Patrick so fairly uttered. 

"It's piteous, I know," Pete avoids eye contact as much as possible, which isn't hard since Patrick seems to be doing the same thing. In this case, in this desperate moment where they both need something to clear this whole mess, the room reeks of their shared fate of comings and goings from one place dreary to another equally so. 

"I don't think I want to remember this," Patrick says with force and vulgar threatening to spill out, "Not this time," 

"The promises we made..." Pete can almost hear the pounding of drums and raging guitar, battling the voice of one Patrick Stump who is staring the bed down, like it is all to blame for what is happening. But he continues, he's desperate to hold onto something, if only a few promises. 

"They are still there, they just weren't made for," he gestures vaguely at the sad situation Pete has brought them to. 

If this is some kind of mania, Pete will gladly take the ride out the nearest exit to something more or less crazy, this is too much to handle. 

Pete lets him go, spiraling in shame and hitting the wreckage of truth harder than he meant to when he came to the boy with probably too much enthusiasm than necessary. 

It is always easier to skip the sugar coating and cleaning and all of the fun minor details and go straight in for the bullet. Pete needs somebody close to him. He needs someone to lay with. He always does. He's so pathetic. 

He can picture the begging: hold on to me please. He is losing his grip and may not be able to keep it. This rhythm they have going on, it's quite pleasant when nobody is talking. He likes it when Patrick moans like that, like a gospel, a mourning of something unholy. It's something that feels like it should be forbidden, so foreign and strange to both of them, they could almost believe it shouldn't be allowed. 

Pete could just die now. He has been through hell but has been showing his face to Patrick. Please keep me like that in your mind. Because his rainbow that Patrick admires is just a ruse, to make him think he is shimmering and great when really Pete is a blank slate ready tear apart at any second. 

The sex and sin are good but the promises and holdings are better. They can see what this will become if they just hold on…

This is just a slice of what could be. Fragmented time that Pete was too foolish to use the energy to figure out. Patrick had really gotten to him. Killing Pete slowly, the voices get deeper and his mind grows smaller. 

When she calls and says she is pregnant Pete is so scared and it is the birth of maturity in him. But the death of a child. A child who would never see the father. A child who would only see a man who parted ways with it the instant it came to be. It dies as Pete becomes more alive. 

These days he doesn't know who he's addressing. He doesn't really want to know. They don't have to remember it, the promises and trust they both have in each other. If Pete holds him and he lets him, could they do it?

What's so frustrating about this whole situation is that Pete cannot just talk about it. He wants to collapse into a pile of bones, and burn them in the deepest fires of hell but he just can't do it. 

They are in a tight situation right now. Have you ever been so aggravated you wish everything would just stop so you could throw a temper tantrum then and there? In fact, skip the stopping part and continue on with your day till Pete steals everybody's thunder. He's a mess and is only digging deeper. He wrecks havoc until he can't go no longer, and then some. It is so bad sometimes Pete can't even put it into words. He just hates himself and thinks about suicide and all that fun shit. Goddamn he hates himself right now. This particular moment sucks because it is a moment in the aftermath of a callback to the life he is trying to forget he wrecked. 

Did Pete already say he wishes he could die? It just comes down to these blurbs of unrequited hatred between his good friends called his own damn personality and individuality and singularity and any other word ending in -ity. 

That feeling of dancing around the house down the stairs to the door, awaiting the time to go meet a special someone has long passed Pete, it has degraded to something close to spontaneous dread when the very thought of them comes about. 

Pete Wentz could say it better but who the fuck is that so let him try to sum it up for his own self pitying loathsome complex: He. hates. Himself.

And so this whole chapter in his life will be another ending, an unfortunate ending that leads to more like it. Pete has been scribbling away his feelings while Patrick scowls at him from across the bedroom where, not long ago, they had traded messages feeling like they were in astral forms confident they could make it through whatever came at them. Now even a single word seems to be the detonator to the ever ticking bomb put in place by one very special Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III. 

And it ends with Pete kind of yelling, and Patrick maybe trying to calm him, having no fucking idea what is going on. He can't stand the feeling that something is just wrong. Pete is invading again and he needs to go.

"I just need some damn time to figure some shit out, okay?!" 

"Goddamnit Pete, you can't sit on your ass waiting for your feelings to fix themselves!" 

The fact that Patrick is unsurprisingly right isn't fair and Pete is having an epiphany that he can leave right now and not have to deal with the bullshit he drove his own sorry guyliner into, a hundred miles and hour with out even a blink in the direction of common sense. And that might just work, if Patrick wasn't bitch-ass right. 

"I know," of course Pete doesn't acknowledge that Patrick may have credibility to what he is saying but instead makes it all about him.

A grunt and dagger eyes aimed towards a poor speck on the wall is all he gets in response. Which more than he thinks he deserves. 

Pete knows Patrick will go and that is exactly what he does, leaving the last good thing surely to happen in his life.

~*~

"Just shut up and listen. Please," Patrick's words causes Pete to wince, but he won't let it deter him from trying to talk over the guy who has thus far put up with his bullshit all morning, and now into late afternoon when he could have been, well, doing something else. Anything else. It takes a deep lip lock that lasts for what feels like a century and a half to get just a few seconds to silence. Really, it is Patrick's determination to fucking end this drama that is holding the two boys close to crying to keep from falling apart. 

"This is kinda fucked up but I like it," Patrick says with the ferocity one can only get from a whole morning of not sleeping but instead contemplating where his life is heading compared to the past of the sad and dramatic man currently right in front of him. 

And he wants to be with him forever, at least in this moment.

How their worlds seem to collide. Like black and white cinema screens mixing into full color. 

They are pathetic in the most awesome ways.

Patrick can't picture being without him. After a hell of a heartbreak from another sad man and tons of ice cream and days locked in his room with the guitar later, he is having the best time of his life and now Pete is telling him he needs to leave. This is helping Patrick, it is curing his invisible depression and giving him the medicine he needs to carry on. But it's all okay, really. It's just fucking fine, push the hospital patient away. He is kind of sick but it feels so good. He wants a truthful resolution to this, and none of that god shit Pete seems to shove down people's throats.

Patrick wants to live forever. Then they will never have to die. And fuck, being away from him is just hell. Pete says he is wasted time, the glass in the bottom of an hour-glass. And Patrick spits, "Well, at least it's only half," that makes him smile at least. 

This whole effort of dragging his ass down to the lame hotel room has, this far, been at least a full day. It reminds Patrick of some dumpster place in New York City. Who would ever go there? He is almost complaining but he has more pressing matters to deal with here. Like his own happiness, and not destroying his last moments of summer.

"We could be immortals," he tells Pete. Scraping for any goddamn metaphor to get through to his head that it's not indeed the end of the world. 

"It wouldn't last," 

"It wouldn't be for long..." Patrick trails off, it seems this is an impossible task, to get him to even look up. He had it set in his mind when he marched back to Pete that he would get them back to a place where they could at least enjoy each other's presence but it seems like Pete isn't having it. With Patrick's hopes descending from something close to an innocent child's balloon to a pathetic and deflated thing, he feels the incoming call he knows all to well to recede from life as he knows it because something is about to happen. It probably has already happened but they were both too caught up in the moment of wanting to give a shit about things to notice. 

Pete glances up at him, centuries hidden beneath deep brown irises, and Patrick knows before he can say anything that it's not worth it. He won't budge from his stubborn position of giving up and Patrick can go fuck himself for all he cares, he won't move from this goddamn bed.

It seems moments like these last forever and when that moment is gone, he truly feels like he has lived for ages. Enough to witness birth, growth, and decay on both fronts. Patrick wonders whether it is helpful to know that it won't last when you are going in for it, the experience and thrill of it all. He wonders if it is better or worse to be aware that the high you get from loving too hard and too fast will come crashing down on you and you are just left with the drag of an overdose that was just too much on your system.

They can honestly live forever. And if they just leave this place, shut the world out, they seriously would be in that moment. Patrick would really like another chance to live that. But not this time. Not in this lifetime.

~*~

Pete hates that he can feel the fucking excitement of going back. He can feel every feeling possible from the moment Patrick leaves the room to when he steps onto the evening bus back home.The concept of missing things that shouldn't be missed. The echoes of what was. The waitings of what will be.

And so it begins a new era. Dawn, morning. Whatever the fuck you wish to call it, what they had was real. Pete left him there to wonder what the hell he was made of and never really gave him a straight answer to any of the boy’s wonderings, really.

Honestly, Pete will miss him. Patrick is his favourite everything. He doesn’t want to think about how he didn’t do anything productive that would last well into his future in the duration of his little detour from normal life but found something much more memorable, if only it lasted for just a second of time. He saved Patrick from his summer drought but he thinks Patrick saved him from his hell of a life.

It was a nice break in his boring routine of fucking relationships and shit up. At least he was fucking things up in a somewhat less scarring way; they both gave and took and will reopen them with new and old routines. 

And he doesn’t want to forget all of what they had. He hates using the past tense but they were fireworks that exploded a little too loudly and a little too soon. 

And when it comes time next year, if he makes it through alive, Pete will definitely come back to him, to stay a while longer and get to know the boy a little more. At least he would apologize for writing about a thousand songs about him in the time they were apart. And God fucking knows that everything Pete would write would be about Patrick. Maybe. Or Patrick could turn out to be just be another fling that can be tucked away in his archival mind. He finds he doesn’t want to look into the future just as much as he doesn’t want to dwell on the past.

Tire screeches match the crack in his voice as he hums along to the beat Pete is drumming on the wheel. It’s not raining this time but it seems like the sky is raining stars. Day fades out and Pete is reminded of seemingly endless nights of falling asleep under those same stars, sometimes after a shared cup of ramen, sometimes after riding Patrick nearly into the ground. A dad hat that may have the same colors of one of Patrick’s, may even be Patrick is he were just a bit shorter, and had better lips. The bus gives a sudden lurch, as Pete jerks forward and is brought back to the night where his stomach did the same thing. Not that he remembers it much but the feeling is the same, he is sure.

He had questions and doubts before but Patrick had released them all from Pete. Leaving is like needing all of the things you have forgotten, and scrambling to get replacement emotions he never had before. Pete doesn’t like it. 

It’s these little gimmicks that come up here and there that should not be there that gets Pete wanting more time to just...figure himself out a little more. With somebody that will understand him in a way he has never encountered before. Or is that selfish? Was this all for his own benefit? He came thinking about himself and is leaving with the same thoughts, just of a different person with altered events but it seemed like they had an effect of the same manner. Perhaps that is just his boomerang thoughts coming back to slam into his face at a hundred miles an hour. Maybe Pete should get back for another round with Judy.

Someone Patrick used to love. Will that be Pete’s legacy? How will Patrick remember him?  
Pete wishes he cared, he wishes he knew how to.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
